Like that strong sensitive type?If you missed the Super Bowl and all those SUV ads, the
term "male display" might have little meaning. But ecologists and evolutionists
say these displays are designed to seduce a female for mating purposes.

Translated, displays help pass along the genes.

Seems to us that only the seagull or gorilla or
barfly that is the lucky target of the male display can know the exact
message. But in general, male displays include:

I've got energy to help raise the young 'uns.

None of the other guys would dare mess with me -- or my kids.

I'm a man (or one spanking fine bird).

I've got dynamite genes.

I'm healthy.

Male displays often involve a tad of male-bashing
-- as mule deer crash heads or walruses whonk tusks. But like guys duking
it out in a roadhouse parking lot, the displays can get a bit intimidating
to the ladies who are their supposed beneficiaries.

You don't have to be a feminist (although it might
help) to wonder: Is this what the ladies really want? Or do aggressive
mating displays frighten the females instead of impressing them?

The question reflects a change in focus of evolutionary
theory. Until recently, biologists who studied mating behavior focused
on males. Lately, they've begun to wonder about "female choice." Are the
ladies actively choosing males during courtship? If so, what do they make
of male behavior?

(Left) The more intense the display, the more likely
a male is to mate with the female he's attracting. (Right) The more a
guy startles the female bowerbird, the less likely he is to mate with
her.Courtesy Gail Patricelli

Take a bow, bowerbird University of Maryland biology doctoral student Gail
Patricelli has taken this question one step further in her study of the
bizarre courting behavior of the satin bowerbird. People who watched Ptilonorhynchus
violaceus have begun to wonder about a really ridiculous question: Does
female behavior influence male behavior during courtship?

In other words, do the two sexes communicate at
this crucial moment?

We'll get back to that heretical notion shortly.
First, we need to backtrack for some background.

If you're into animal courtship, you probably know
the little bowerbird, a native of Australia and New Guinea. The males
build elaborate "bowers," or courting courtyards, which Patricelli describes
as "a two-walled stick structure with a platform, decorated with different
colored objects."

But not just any color, she adds. "Bright blue is
a favorite color for satin bowerbirds. They'll use parrot feathers, but
if people are around they will use pen caps or shotgun shells. My favorite
was a baby pacifier."

During mating season, in the spring, the ladies
tour the bowers, sizing up the studs by their architectural prowess and
by their talent at staging "a dramatic, coordinated display of feather-pulling,
extending the wings suddenly, and running accompanied by a loud buzzing
vocalization," Patricelli and Gerald Borgia wrote (see "Male Displays..."
in the bibliography).

Too much of a good thing? Gerald Borgia, a University of Maryland biology professor
who has studied bowerbirds for 22 years, found that an intense and aggressive
display is essential for mating success. He says most males do not score,
but the winners get multiple partners, and the chance to pass their genes
to the next generation. "One very successful male who had a good bower
mated with 25 females over one 2-month mating period," said Borgia. "The
sexiest guys get all the mates."

But what is sexy? Patricelli says females may be
startled (looking like a 7-year-old who's seen a ghost) when the guy gets
too hot and heavy. That's logical, since the mating dance resembles what
the male uses to intimidate other dudes at feeding sites.

That, says Patricelli, cuts into the romantic effect
and damages the guy's chances of scoring.

So with bowerbirds, as with Homo sapiens, smart
fellas are cautious fellas during courting. "They need to be very
aggressive during courtship, but the female can be threatened," says Patricelli
about the birds. "It's a delicate line. They've got to be intense, but
if they're too intense at the wrong time, it can scare her off."

(Sound familiar, guys?)

In other words, females can get frightened when
the bowerbird goes overbird -- we mean overboard.

Fembot Schlembot To test whether successful guys -- the ones that can
convince females to mate -- are taking cues from the gals, Patricelli
and Borgia collaborated with Gregory Walsh, a mechanical engineer at Maryland,
to build a robot female that could dance, weave and crouch like a real,
live female. Once the robotic "guts" arrived in Australia, Patricelli
dressed it in a real bowerbird feather suit.

Call it robotic taxidermy in the service of science.
Over at Borgia's lab, they call it "fembot."

Whatever.

The ability to crouch is critical because it's how
females signal that they are comfortable with the intense, aggressive
displays. The fembots were so realistic, said Walsh, that two male bowerbirds
fought for the right to mate with a fembot (if that is not against the
law in Australia, it ought to be).

By testing males with robotic females, Patricelli
and her co-authors were able to show that the most successful males were
those that gave highly intense displays without threatening females, and
that they succeed in mating by modulating their displays in response to
female crouching signals. "The most attractive males are those that have
it [the heavy display] and know how to use it," says Patricelli.

Communication: The key to true love? Before
you start picturing male bowerbirds as paragons of peace who soothe females
by cooing the avian equivalent of "Thank you for sharing that...", remember
that the guys are nasty to their buddies. During the two-month mating
season, Patricelli says, the males "defend against rival males, destroy
each others bowers, steal decorations...."

Nor are these ideal mates from the female's point
of view. For all the effort male bowerbirds pay to attracting females,
they pull an immediate fade-out after scoring. Males, says Patricelli,
"don't provide any parental care, so they can dedicate themselves entirely
to mating."